1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a sheet holding structure and a printer for an electronic voting apparatus including the sheet holding structure.
2. Description of the Related Art
Conventional election in a self-governing body or the like has been conducted in such a manner that voters write person names or the like on voting slips and put the slips into a ballot box. Vote counting has been carried out in such a manner that in the presence of election administrators, the ballot box is opened and the voting slips are taken out from the box and are visually read and counted one by one. The conventional election has been entirely conducted through manual work in the manner described above, which elongates a time for counting and confirming a result of the vote counting and increases an effort expended by workers.
Therefore, in recent years, the use of electronic voting computers is being adopted. A fundamental construction of an electronic voting system includes electronic voting terminals respectively arranged in voting booths and a server to which the respective electronic voting terminals are connected. Each electronic voting terminal includes a display apparatus (display) for displaying the names or the like of candidates, and an input apparatus, with which voters cast their votes. There is also a case where a touch panel obtained by integrating the display apparatus and the input apparatus is used.
In the case of the electronic voting, vote counting is performed by compiling at the server electronic data (vote contents) inputted from the input apparatus of each electronic voting terminal. Here, it is desired to carry out inspection in order to confirm whether any fraud or tampering, such as rewriting of the electronic data, has been done to the votes or not. In order to conduct such inspection, it is required that the contents of each vote are not only stored as electronic data but also are printed by a printer to thereby enable storage in the form of a paper medium. That is, it is required to provide a printer connected to the electronic voting terminal.
Patent Documents 1 and 2 disclose an electronic voting apparatus in which a printer is connected to an electronic voting terminal, thereby making it possible to visually confirm a result of printing by the printer in a voting booth. With this construction, the contents of a vote inputted by a voter using an input apparatus are not only transmitted to a server as electronic data but also are printed on paper by the printer, thereby allowing the voter to confirm the vote contents by seeing a result of the printing on the paper through a window portion.
[Patent Document 1] JP 2002-230610 A
[Patent Document 2] JP 2002-279126 A
It is expected that many and unspecified voters votes one after another at the electronic voting apparatus, so it is desired to avoid a situation, in which the printer connected to the electronic voting terminal is out of paper, as much as possible. Accordingly, Patent Documents 1 and 2 adopt a construction in which the printing is performed on a long roll paper and printed portions of the paper are sequentially taken up in a roll manner after the contents of the printing (vote contents) have been confirmed by the voters. When such a take-up system is used, however, results of the voting by the respective voters are printed in the order of the voting, so it is possible to know the contents of the voting by seeing the taken-up roll paper based on the order of the voters, which raises a problem from a privacy standpoint. Also, it is required to prevent a portion, in which the contents of voting by a previous voter has been printed, from being seen by the next voter, which leads to a necessity to convey the printed portion to the outside of the window portion.
With a conceivable measure against this problem, the roll paper is cut off in succession after the printing. In this case, recording sheets generated through the cutoff may be collected, with the collected many recording sheets being scattered to some extent and being taken out relatively at random. Accordingly, the problem in terms of privacy is solved. Also, the portion, in which the contents of the voting of the previous voter have been printed, is cut off from the roll paper and is collected, which prevents a case where the contents of the voting by the previous voter are seen by the next voter.
In the case of adopting a construction in which the roll paper is used and cutting of the roll paper is performed after printing in the manner described above, however, many conveyance rollers that convey the roll paper are required. In the case of adopting a construction in which it is possible for voters to see results of printing through a window portion in the manner described above, it is preferable that the window portion be provided between a print portion of a printer and a roll paper discharge portion, and the size of the window portion be increased in order to make it easy to see the results of the printing. The roll paper is held in a roll manner, so the roll paper has a tendency to be curled. In addition, a leading end of the roll paper is set as a free end. Therefore, it is difficult to convey the roll paper smoothly over a long distance of the window portion described above, which makes it necessary to provide multiple conveyance rollers in the window portion. As a result, a constructive complication, a size increase, and a cost increase of an electronic voting apparatus including a printer become inevitable.